Another matinee this week. Despite mostly negative reactions from mainstream media outlets, I’ve found Suicide Squad to be quite entertaining and worth a watch. It’s pretty much your garden variety comic book action flick where a city/the country/the world is threatened and a team needs to be formed to neutralize the threat. The twist here is that the team in this movie is made up of various villains of the DC Comics world instead of the usual superheroes. In exchange for their cooperation, these villains get promised lighter sentences. It has great action sequences, monsters getting their butts kicked, a dash of comedy, and a killer soundtrack. There is no real logic to it or deep and complex plot, but some movies can get away with that and still be considered fun. The pacing is a bit off in some spots and there are some cuts to character backstories in odd places. I know it’s a bit challenging to write for teams as opposed to single hero stories, but I did feel that they keyed more on Deadshot and Harley Quinn more than the other characters a bit too much. Also, I’m not too up to speed on the DC universe, but I think Deadshot could have been a bit more bad ass. I know Will Smith could pull off being more bad ass. Harley Quinn’s accent keeps fading in and out. There doesn’t seem to be any point to Killer Croc being in the movie. Jared Leto’s performance as The Joker I found to be quite lackluster, but luckily he was more of a side character and hardly in the film (honestly, it didn’t need him really). For me, nobody can top Heath Ledger’s or Jack Nicholson’s portrayals of The Joker. On the whole though, I give this a 7.5 out of 10. Not too bad.

Another movie worth watching is Disney’s Zootopia. Zootopia is a cute animated film for the whole family to enjoy. While kids will fall in love with the animal characters and the message that anyone can be anything they want, adults will note some of the deeper undertones of class/race relations and everything not always being as it seems on the outside as well as a few in jokes here and there. Judy Hopps is a rookie cop in Zootopia. She is also the city’s first rabbit officer. She learns that being a police officer is not as easy as she thought and takes on a mysterious case to prove her worth as being more than just a meter maid. 8 out of 10, surprisingly quite enjoyable.